A diamond is born - Diamantschleiferei Michael Bonke

These are counted, weighed and checked after every work step. An exact account is maintainedfor the loss of weight. When a particular polisher’s stones seem to lose more weight on anaverage than those of his/her colleagues, then he/she is immediately pinned up in front of us andwe keep a close eye on where he/she is going wrong. Besides, our stones are graded exactly asper their qualities, before they are given for cutting and polishing. Our Senior Supervisors wouldalso be able to tell immediately if a part of the cutting has not been done in our plant. The loss thatan owner of a polishing plant incurs in Bombay because of this exchange of stones is estimated tobe 3% to 15% of his/her earnings. Despite that, the production costs of brilliants in Bombay andSurat are almost only half as much as in our polishing plant.If we were to let our stones be cut and polished in Surat, we would also have it much cheaper. Thecosts there are much lower than in our plant. The reasons behind this are lower wages, lack ofsocial security, cheaper equipment, almost no maintenance costs for the qualitatively ill-workingmachines, cheaper material like press-pots, etc. Most importantly however, we have much moreloss of weight in our stones with perfect proportions.If we were to let the cutting take place elsewhere else, we would also have the same productas all others. A price advantage is not our effective weapon in this daily fight for existence. It isquality. We are proud of the fact that in the last 25 years, we have cut and polished more than fivemillion brilliants, which are rarely surpassed by any another in quality. 5 million brilliants sparkleday after day somewhere in the world, with a brilliance that is slightly different than the usual.